Patricia A. Dunn is a professor emerita of English who teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in both English and in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. Her areas of teaching and research are composition and rhetoric, English education, and disability studies. In 2013, she won the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
She has published five books: two on composition theory and the teaching of writing: Talking, Sketching, Moving: Multiple Literacies in the Teaching of Writing (2001, 2022), and Learning Re-Abled: The Learning Disability Controversy and Composition Studies (1995, 2011). Both are now available as free downloads from the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse.
Her third book, co-written with Ken Lindblom, critiques those who complain about other people’s “grammar”: Grammar Rants: How a Backstage Tour of Writing Complaints Can Help Students Make Informed, Savvy Choices about Their Writing (2011). Her fourth book analyzes disability myths and tropes in books for young people: Disabling Characters: Representations of Disability in Young Adult Literature (2015).
Her latest book, Drawing Conclusions: Using Visual Thinking to Understand Complex Concepts in the Classroom (2021), published by Teachers College Press, Columbia University, shows how student-drawn, juxtaposed visual representations can help students better understand and process challenging concepts.
She has also published a number of book chapters and blogs, as well as articles in College English, English Journal, JAC, Rhetoric Review, Kairos, and College Composition and Communication. She has presented at many conferences, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE), the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference, and the International Federation of Teachers of English.